2013 was a wonderful year for women in radio, with Jameela Jamil, Mishal
Husain and Charlotte Green all being given plum roles

It’s been quite a female year. Woman’s Hour presenter Jenni Murray was made a Dame. Cross-dressing artist Grayson Perry delivered the Reith Lectures in hand-made silken garments fit for the grandest of panto dames. And only a panto dame could have got away with quite so much cheekily outrageous observation of the obvious.

In a blaze of July publicity Mishal Husain was announced as a new Today presenter. She arrived in October. Calm and efficient, if only she could learn not to swallow the last word in a sentence and then teach the trick to fellow presenters Justin Webb, Evan Davis and Sarah Montague she’d be practically perfect.

In January,Jameela Jamil became the first woman to present Radio 1’s 50-year-old Chart Show with, in its final hour, webcam pictures of her. This latter addition heralded new Director General Tony Hall’s vision for the BBC, announced in October.“I want to see a Radio 1 video channel on the iPlayer, alongside BBC Three,” he said, embracing the digital future with an enthusiasm that recalls the mission statements of former DG John Birt (1992-2000). The BBC has yet to appoint a female Director General.

BBC Radio 1 Presenters Jameela Jamil Photo: Ray Burmiston

After a turbulent term as head of BBC news, Helen Boaden returned to BBC Radio in February, as its second female supremo. Having worked for File on 4 and Woman’s Hour, she’d been a highly successful Radio 4 Controller (2000-2004), the third woman in that post. Not that anyone made much of a fuss about such things back then. It was taken for granted that women would, eventually, achieve professional parity with men.

Yet progress in radio (where most listeners are women and most voices are male) has seemed slow, so slow that in 2011 a new group, Sound Women, was launched to speed the process. Perhaps it’s working. Ritula Shah, of Radio 4’s The World Tonight, was (recently) named successor to Robin Lustig (who left last year) as main presenter.

Charlotte Green gave up reading the news and Shipping Forecast on Radio 4, promptly got her own shows on Classic FM then, this autumn, made broadcasting history as the first woman to present BBC radio’s football results. Singer Charlotte Church was the first woman to give the John Peel Lecture on Radio 6 Music, speaking truth to power from personal experience, attacking the music industry for selling women’s sexuality, warning the BBC its new emphasis on iPlayer images would seem to endorse the raunchiness of such performers as Rihannaand Miley Cyrus.

Singer Charlotte Church Photo: TINA HILLIER

Woman’s Hour launched its Power List as the year began and has made many a self-congratulatory reference to it ever since. I flinch. But I am an old-time feminist and consider such a list inimical to this programme’s long and honourable egalitarian tradition. Let mere male middle managers jostle for the spotlight. Real women can manage anything.

Radio 5 Live, founded in 1994 by a female Director of radio (Liz Forgan) and Controller (Jenny Abramsky), has ever since led other BBC networks in having women steer daytime shows, currently Rachel Burden on breakfast; Victoria Derbyshire midmorning, (unmatched in cool tackling of difficult and often disagreeable subjects), Shelagh Fogarty at noon on politics, Anna Foster co-hosting drivetime; Eleanor Oldroyd anywhere and everywhere, presenting sport, cheering up George Riley, propping up Tony Livesey. Livesey was superseded in May by Edith Bowman, formerly of Radio 1, as presenter of 5 Live’s Bump Club, an on-air meeting of expectant mums. He seemed miffed. She does it better.

Radio 2 remains the BBC’s most popular network. Controller Bob Shennan recently explained to Radio 4’s Feedback why this success impedes gender equality. Why change a winning daytime line-up? That’s whyVanessa Feltz is on very early, Jo Whiley late and Janice Long very late indeed. Zoe Ball, Anneka Rice, Sara Cox, Claudia Winkleman, Elaine Paige and Liza Tarbuck all appear, but not in main slots unless deputising for men.

Full credit to Shennan, though, for Stuart Maconie’s admirable year-long series The People’s Songs, and for backing the ambitious notion of having Tom Stoppard write a play, Darkside, around Pink Floyd’s historic album The Dark Side of the Moon (pity the result was a dud). After the death of David Jacobs, Radio 2’s Sunday nights changed, Shennan says from necessity, I think for the worse. Clare Teal is a good singer. As host of a new two-hour show she’s embarrassing.

Shennan made a star signing this year in Clare Balding, long-time sports reporter, host of Radio 4’s Ramblings, national heroine for her television work at the 2012 Olympics and Jubilee river pageant. Good Morning Sunday, once a religious programme, was recalibrated for her, becoming “spiritually inclined”. Balding’s undoubted gifts are not shown to advantage here.

Other women have shone brighter.Cerys Matthews won the 2013 Sony Award for music broadcaster of the year for her 6 Music show but has also sparkled on Radios 2 and 4, particularly with a fine Archive Hour on the legendary 1973 Barbarians defeat of the All Blacks at Cardiff Arms Park.

Anne McElvoy presented major Radio 4 series, on Europe, British Conservatism and Germany, plus quite a few Start the Weeks and dozens of Radio 3 Night Waves. Stephanie Flanders also hosted Start the Week as well as her own incisive series, Stephanomics. What a pity she’s left the BBC. What an accolade that she’s now chief market strategist for JP Morgan Asset Management in Europe.

There is not, I regret to say, a woman presenter to match the wit, bite, invention and editorial weight of PM’sEddie Mair. Now I think of it, there’s no man, either. But here’s a name to watch: Linda Yueh, new BBC chief business correspondent.

Sue MacGregor (first woman to present Today) continued to host the best discussion programme on the airwaves, Radio 4's The Reunion. Libby Purves (second female Today presenter) continues to host Midweek but will be most fondly recalled this year for The Silence at the Song’s End, a play about the suicide of her son Nicholas.

There’s been a lot of sex talk all year, some useful. For File on 4 in March, Jane Deith did a devastating report on the Rochdale sex predators. In June, Jo Fidgen dissected pornography for Radio 4’s revered Analysis. Jane Garveylaunched a new Radio 4 late-night, live discussion show, Summer Nights, with a brisk tour of the wilder shores of human congress. Woman’s Hour, as ever, spoke of it often.

Jane Garvey Photo: BBC

If you want to know an answer to a tricky question, though, rely on Winifred Robinson on Radio 4’s You and Yours. She even got a spokesman to admit that a government leaflet on a shingles vaccine was inaccurate and misleading. In October Helen Grady did an edition of The Report for Radio 4 which, with care, exposed the inadequacies of the Government’s Help To Buy scheme.

Full marks to Radio 4 Controller Gwyneth Williams for the imaginative original scheduling of the year’s best drama,Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, with its first episode on Radio 4, the others on 4 Extra (4 Extra listening soared; the whole sequence will be repeated on Radio 4 this Christmas). Fewer marks for swamping her schedule with Nelson Mandela tributes.

Commercial radio celebrated its 1973 beginnings, when LBC and Capital first came on air. LBC, now owned by the biggest group of stations, Global, has concentrated this year on political impact, signing Deputy Prime Minister Nick Cleggto do a weekly live phone-in with Nick Ferrari, using the internet to make it heard anywhere. Not a week goes by when it doesn’t make a headline. Boris Johnson now does a similar show for them. Not a woman in sight.

Finally, in the parallel universe ofThe Archers, the event of the year has been Vanessa Whitburn’s retirement as its longest-serving editor. Sean O’Connor replaces her. He, like every other BBC executive, has budget cuts to implement. A word of advice, Sean: be careful whom you chop.